zenpundit.com

NUCLEAR RIVALS IN TEHERAN

It has been little remarked in the crisis but Iran’s nuclear program is a pivotal political football in elite factional intrigue within Iran’s ruling hierarchy.

Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and an opposing candidate to President Ahmadinejad in the las election heads the powerful Expediency Council that mediates between the elected government and the unelected clerical elite. Rafsanjani used that position Tuesday to steal some of the limelight on the nuclear issue by preempting his rival, Ahmadinejad’s announcement.

The two men are bitter rivals as Ahmadinejad’s campaign theme against corruption was obviously aimed at Rafsanjani whose family grew very wealthy during the former president’s time in government. Both men were ardent disciples of Iran’s revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini though the machiavellian Rafsanjani is a cleric and Ahmadinejad, whose power base is in the Pasdaran and among radical extremists, is not.

“COUNTERINSURGENCY IS ARMED SOCIAL WORK”

I just finished reading a remarkable and fluidly written distillation of counterinsurgency principles that had been recommended by Dave Dilegge of the Small Wars Journal and Dr. Tom Odom. Entitled ” Twenty-Eight Articles”, ( PDF) it’s author is Dr. David Kilcullen, a retired colonel in the Australian Army and a special adviser to both the U.S. Department of Defense and the State Department on irregular warfare and counterterrorism.

Tom Odom has summarized the article here and interesting discussion follows but I strongly recommend reading it for yourself. A few tidbits of Kilcullen wisdom:

“..focus on the population, build your own solution, further your game plan and fight the enemy only when he gets in the way “

“How would you react if foreigners came to your neighborhood and conducted the operations you planned? What if somebody came to your mother’s house and did that ?”

” ‘Hearts’ means means persuading people their best interests are served by your success; ‘Minds’ means convincing them that you can protect them and that resisting is pointless. Note that neither concept has to do whether people like you.”

“..’normality’ in Kandahar is not the same as in Kansas”

“…stop your people fraternizing with local children…children are sharp-eyed, lacking in empathy, and willing to commit atrocities from which their elders will shrink. “

” Exploit a single narrative “

“…there is no such thing as impartial humanitarian assistance”

Impressive.

ON THOUGHT, PRESENTATION AND CONNECTION

William Lind, writing at DNI about dysfunctional Pentagon culture, has an essay “ The Fourth Plague” that concisely explains how institutional scenarios can encourage or discourage creative thinking. Some excerpts and my commentary:

“The plague of senior officer contractors has effectively pushed those still in the military out of the thought process. Meeting after meeting on issues of doctrine or concepts are dominated by contractors. The officers in the room know that if they wave the BS flag at the contractors, they risk angering the serving senior officers who have given their “buddies” the contract. Junior officers, who have the most direct experience with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are completely excluded. They have no chance of being heard in meetings dominated by retired generals and colonels.”

This is a bad set-up on a whole number of levels as Lind correctly has observed. Experienced practitioners, regardless of the field- the military, medicine, law, education,whatever – are repositories of deep insights and lessons learned born out of painful experience. To be most useful as advisers, teachers or mentors to their juniors, they must remain in regular contact with their field’s emerging developments in order to make their lessons highly relevant. That means being “in the trenches” (in the case of the military, literally) periodically themselves or in direct contact with those who are. In the case of the U.S. military, that there would be an intentional disconnect of this kind between company and brigade commanders and senior advisers on doctrine is stunning. It is also a terrible signal to send in terms morale as well as ensuring that the OODA loop will be corrupted. Subordinates are not encouraged to tell the truth by this kind of set-up.

“The plague of contractors reinforces one of the military’s (and other bureaucracies’) worst habits, formalizing thinking. Concepts and doctrine are now developed through layer after layer of formal, structured meetings, invariably organized around PowerPoint briefings. Most attendees are there as representatives of one or another bureaucratic interest, and their job is to defend their turf. PowerPoint briefings not only disguise a lack of intellectual substance with glitzy gimmicks, they inherently work against the concept of Schwerpunkt. Slides usually present umpteen bulletized “points,” all co-equal in (lack of) importance. In the end, what is important is the briefing itself: the medium is the message.”

Here I will agree and disagree with Lind.

He’s absolutely correct about the “formalized” process being obstructive to clear thinking and negative toward new ideas that question comfortable assertions. The effect that would be derived here in such a hierarchical setting is the construction and continual affirmation of the official ” box” in which all thoughts must occur – exactly the opposite of the brainstorming, horizontal thinking, informed speculation and analytical challenges to sacred cow premises required for an insight-generating, creative, debate. The likely end-product from this kind of process would be group-think and increased isolation since the social incentives would be built-in to make potential options narrower ( “safer”), rather than broader (“risky”).

On the other hand, Lind is putting far too much emphasis on Powerpoint as a cause of the lack of innovative thinking. Powerpoint has its strengths and weaknesses like any other tool or format for the presentation of ideas. Plenty of mediocre, muddled, empty or damn fool ideas have been committed to paper or were presented orally and were nonetheless considered persuasive by virtue of their eloquence. Bad powerpoint briefs might still easily be translated into bad journal articles and we’d be no better off. The failure in either case stems from a failure to think effectively and an undue passivity on the part of the audience that should approach orthodox ideas of their institutional ” received culture” with as much skepticism as they do new ones.

What powerpoint does well is communicate deep ideas quickly and effectively by engaging the visual centers of the brain by offering representational models. It enhances cognitive “connection” to concepts. Anyone who has taken physics or geometry, certainly fields with as much depth as military theory knows the importance of the diagram in teaching concepts -although poorly explained visuals can also mislead (recall your elementary school diagram of an atom as a miniature solar system). Powerpoint slides can make poorly conceived ideas “look” better, no argument, but they cannot change the substance.

John Robb had some important comments on Lind’s essay today:

“Here’s how to break this: an open source movement within the junior ranks. Put the seeds of new doctrines in wikis and build a community to flesh it out. Build blogs to share ideas. Network them. Technology can be of service here to build a knowledge network that outpaces the formal network in quality, speed and flexibility by an order of magnitude or more. Route around the gridlock by making the efforts public. Get congressional sponsors. You could even get individual and corporate sponsors to pay for the platform development (under the condition that they leave it alone) — there are patriots out there that care.”

I agree. Along those lines, check out GroupIntel Blog and The Small Wars Council.

NEW YET OLD: MAOIST GUERILLAS START TO GO GLOBAL IN NEPAL

Curzon at Coming Anarchy has drawn attention to the increasingly vicious civil war in Nepal that pits the reactionary regime of an absolute monarch, King Gyanendra against the Maoist rebels who seek the King’s overthrow in order to establish a Communist dictatorship. Democratic and parliamentary parties have recently allied themselves with the rebels who make up the armed wing of Nepal’s Communist party in order to pressure the King into restoring democratic rule. The Maoist rebellion, however, long predates King Gyanendra’s “autogolpe” and was actually launched in 1996 by the Communist Party against Nepal’s previous democratic regime.

The Royal Government, something of an international pariah for the restoration of absolute monarchy, has made little headway against the rebels and has been much criticized -accurately- for suppression of political freedoms, human rights abuses and civilian casualties. The fighting spirit of the army is uneven and they lack the resources, external support and political competence to wage an effective counterinsurgency war. Curzon also excerpted from The Atlantic, reporting from Robert Kaplan, in an earlier post:

“This was all bad news for the Royal Nepalese Army, I thought, though Colonel Cross was careful not to make explicit political statements, given his circumstances: the Maoists are in the hills nearby, and government forces are down the street. The fact is that the Maoists come from the same sturdy hill tribes that Cross recruited for decades, while many of the RNA’s forces are softer plainsmen and can’t employ artillery, because even a handful of civilian casualties would ignite protests from the international community. Moreover, the Maoists are fortified by “the mystic dimension of service and the sanctity of an oath,” whereas RNA recruits—aside from some specialized units—join for a salary and a career.”

Brutal, hesitant and uncertain is a bad combination for any army. State forces in Nepal suffer a string of disadvantages and deficits whether you look at them from the perspective of Clausewitz or John Boyd. While losing the conflict to the rebels in the political and moral spheres they are not efficient or effective in the purely military operational or logistical aspects either.

The Maoist rebels have, overall, been far more astute combatants but they represent a fusion of old and new.

Despite a horrific human rights record of their own that includes atrocities, torture, use of children as soldiers and condemnation from international human rights organizations, major American news outlets continue to recycle Nepalese Communist Party propaganda about its leader Prachanda as a one-time “kind-hearted boy”, concerned for ” the poor of the village”. Rebels have skillfully enlisted parliamentary parties as allies to press political and media campaigns against the autocratic government which has drawn favorable attention in the Western media.

Ideologically disciplined, with throwback “human-wave” tactics, and hoary ” final offensive” rhetoric, the rebels have also recently tapped into ” the bazaar of violence” to begin evolving tactically, making use now of IED’s and swarming. The rebels are shifting from the classic three-stage Marxist insurgency of Mao and Giap toward becoming more like a modern 4GW or Global Guerilla movement.

Whether Communist Party discipline can hold the rebels together or if counterinsurgency efforts and natural battlefield evolution causes decentralization and reemergence of Maoist forces as a scale-free network structure, will effect the outcome for Nepal. In the latter case, you would have a scenario much like Iraq with military groups fracturing into competing blocs and ongoing, low intensity warfare and state failure lasting, probably, for decades.

In the former situation, if the Maoists succeed in overthrowing the King and establishing a state, then the historical track record of other Maoist movements like the Shining Path, Khmer Rouge and in China itself bodes poorly for the 27 million people of Nepal.

STOPPING THE IRANIAN BOMB WON’T PREVENT THE NEED TO PREPARE FOR THE MASS PROLIFERATION AGE[ UPDATED II]

Iran is very much in the news after Seymour Hersh’s assertion of preparations for a major American military strike, perhaps a full scale war, to destroy Iran’s overt “civilian” and clandestine nuclear weapons programs. A number of experts on military affairs second the general trend toward military conflict with Teheran, which for his part, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems determined to provoke.

The conflict with Iran is a basic one the United States and the West will face again and again. Signatories to the NPT are allowed to import nuclear technology and expertise for “peaceful” uses under IAEA safeguards. Because technology and knowledge are fungible – and atomic bombs are 1945 technology and miniaturized warheads suitable for ballistic missiles are late 1950’s to early 1960’s technology – states can simply set up parallel programs and tear up the treaty when their clandestine programs are sufficiently advanced, having secured the means under false pretenses.

Iraq, Iran and North Korea were all caught red-handed but only one of the three was eventually disarmed. This situation is going to happen again regardless of the outcome with Teheran because approximately ten to twenty years ago a number of states – China, Pakistan, Russia, Germany and France elected to turn a blind eye to proliferation of nuclear weapons or in the case of Pakistan, actively encourage proliferation. This was a matter of policy or at best, corruption of policy.

There’s only a number of steps that can be taken by the United States:

Unilaterally demonstrate that Iraq was no anomaly and militarily devastate unfriendly states that try to acquire nukes – i.e. impose high potential costs on regimes having clandestine programs.

Build a Core-wide consensus to rewrite the NPT as a treaty with teeth backed by a stringent, updated, version of COCOM.

Bilaterally and multilaterally negotiate with rogue states piecemeal to buy them off for disarming completely( Libya Model).

Revise military nuclear warfighting doctrine and embark upon a weapons-building program that renders nuclear missiles too dangerous to use against the United States, perhaps with an entirely new class of nuclear or high energy weapons.

The Bush administration and the EU have been pursuing options II. and III. with Iran but Iran has indicated that its leadership believes that possession of nuclear weapons are worth any price.

Option I. is a bad option for reasons laid out by John Robb, Thomas P.M. Barnett, James Fallows and numerous others but in the short term it may be the only option the Iranians decide to leave us.

UPDATE:

Iran boasts of enrichment prowess, categorically defies UNSC.

UPDATE II.

Interesting and vigorous debate in the comment section. To clarify my position:

A grand bargain with Iran that ends the nuke program is the best outcome but that is, in my view, highly unlikely that the current regime in Teheran would accept any terms. Secondly, the regime as constituted today isn’t to be trusted with nuclear weapons so, barring a diplomatic breakthrough, we are headed for a serious conflict. Third – and I’m surprised my critics are studiously ignoring the main point of my post – this scenario will be repeated with other states unless the dynamics of nuclear proliferation are changed. The technology is simply too available for misuse under the current IAEA regime.

PS -See new additions or changes in the links below.

Iranian Bomb Links:

American Future New !

Praktike

Austin Bay

Coming Anarchy

DNI

The Glittering Eye

Kobayashi Maru

Winds of Change

Armchair Generalist

Kevin Drum

Ralph Peters

Whirledview New !

Arms and Influence New !

John Robb New !